Intel X3100 users rejoice! It's finally here! New Pre-Beta Drivers

Thanks man!

Unfortunately my Dell have Brazilian Keyboard and Dell Brazil release only one bios for XPS 1330.
Any bios atualization i'll lose "?" and "/" key.

With Intel driver i lose brightness adjust (fn up/ fn down keys) and sometimes the screen go black.

 

Dell Brazil offers me:
. A15 ( click)
. A02, A06, A07, A09, A10, A11, A12, A14 ( click)

Which version do you have installed and which version do you think is the only one offering "?" and "/" key support with a brasilian keyboard?

Which intel driver revision and combined with which BIOS version?

The more recent intel drivers on M1330 respect the maximum brightness levels that can be set in the BIOS. That means: If the maximum brightness is set to a low value in the BIOS, you won't be able to go beyond that level in Windows. After some software crashes and BSOD the interesting thing that happens is that this level is reset to some arbitrary value. The effect is with more recent intel drivers you can't control brightness levels in Windows anymore. Enter the BIOS (F2) during boot and set brightness level to max. That should fix it.

If that doesn't help install the Dell QuickSet tool. It corrects the key bindings for brightness control which might be different for brazilian keyboards.

 

Guys i'm having issues with the new driver v15.12.4 and Dawn of War 1.51 , when i use the 1280x800 resolution instead of using the whole screen, its as if i'm using 4:3 and that same thing happened with the most recently drivers before v15.12.4.

 

Can anybody test out the Windows Experience Index on their x3100 with the newest drivers?

I'm getting 2.7 under Aero performance, down from 3.4 with the previous set. I've tried reinstalling several times but the score still remains low.

Rolling back to the previous set does not restore the score either. What is going on?

 

You'd better stick with XP SP3, I've only seen NFS underground perform better on Win 7 so far, many other games' performance is the same between two OS, some games perform worse like SW Rep Commando and PES9... Whatever, Win 7 is still in beta stage.

 

Yea I guess that's another way of saying it. Well, all the hardware features are now enabled for X3100 so that's not huge of a problem. Future drivers will be bug fixes.

 

Not necessarily.

Managing multiple source code line branches for different chipsets increases the maintainance effort, since a single bugfix in similar or shared code has to be incoporated in all branches and tested separately. Especially most of the 3D related code (DirectX and OpenGL) is shared between X3100 and X4500/4500MHD.

Given the GM45 and GM965 drivers branched in >= v15.9.4 and merged again in the v15.11.x line, it's not unlikely the same will happen again.

And if it comes to Windows 7 with WDDM 1.1 drivers I'm pretty convinced they need maintainance for quite some time to come.

 

I have W7 + latest drivers and I have no mouse lag, game problems, etc.

Intel graphics are not for complex games (they run but that doesn´t mean you can play them correctly) so people should stop trying latest games. Intel even with W7 drivers cannot do magic and pull a rabbit of this chip: it is slow (for 3D), it won´t do any real-time 3D on anything minimally complex, etc.

Intel has to improve energy consumption, stability, Photoshop support, better video playback quality with lower CPU use. Gaming is a battlefront that Intel Graphics chip owners cannot ask for more so why bother? Intel Graphics are for for productivity & video, nothing more, period.

 

I hope you are right and GM45 and GM965 merge again in the near future.

It is true that most features of the x3100 are already enabled (this is certainly the case with DirectX, but not even close in OpenGL) It could even be a good thing if they focus more in bug fixes and performance tweaking rather than features. However, in my opinion, the problem is that Intel has few resources in the drivers division and if they branch the GM45 and GM965 drivers, even less resources will be spend in improving the X3100 drivers...

About the new drivers, I tested them in COD4 and it "feels" better than before. I don't have the time to do a proper benchmark, Does anyone feels the same I do?

 

I have Bios B00 released to fix the "/" and "?" for XPS 1330 in Brazil.
I've already tried almost all versions released, and only B00 works.

And the driver of Intel that i have instaled is 15.12.4.1666.

The problem is only when i try to adjust the brightness level.
When i click on FN Down the brightness decrease one point and in the next time that i click the screen go black.

I have Dell Quickset installed.

I'll try to adjust the brightness in Bios to test.

Thanks for help.

 

Could you provide a link to the B00 Bios for the XPS M1330? I have provided the links to the various A02 - A15 Bios versions which seem to be the official ones. At least these are the ones on the Dell brazil support page.

Since you stated you tested almost any other BIOS version, do those also have problems regarding brightness with the latest intel drivers?

 

The BIOS of Dell Brazil site is the same of Dell USA.
This version of BIOS is provided only by Dell thru e-mail address.
If you want it, i could send to you.
You could see more here: http://www.dellcomunidade.com/pt/board/message?board.id=Notebooks&thread.id=846

I only test other BIOS to solve the problem of keyboard,
I didin't test others BIOS with Intel driver because i want to keep the keyboard working.

 

Obviously the Dell BIOS B00 is not a stable and officially released one. I have a T00 BIOS on my laptop as well from times where I helped Dell to trace a certain bug.

If it is true that the B00 BIOS you are using is from October 2007 as the forum post suggests that you linked to, then according to my afore mentioned memory corruption bug you might be stuck with these two drivers:
7.14.10.1272 (v15.2.6) dated 05/11/2007
7.14.10.1268 (v15.4.1) dated 05/03/2007

Any other more recent driver will most likely give you severe problems with the B00 BIOS. You might want to check your Video BIOS version. You can read the Video BIOS version from your System BIOS (press F2 during boot) or use igfxcfg.exe / Information. If it is version 1466, then you shouldn't use any more recent driver than v15.2.6 or v15.4.1. If it is version 1588, you might be lucky and try some newer ones.

I used google to translate your dell community thread. User DELL-Fabricio posted on 10-22-2007 07:24 AM that Dell is incorporating the keyboard fix in current BIOS versions. But from your posts this didn't happen up to know (A15 Bios). If that's the case, you might want to get in touch with Dell again and ask for an updated BIOS.

 

That information is from an Intel guy. Though he doesn't work with IGPs directly, he's close enough to know. He said the part about unifying the drivers in 15.11 long time ago.

I'd think the limit of new feature "support" is how much X3100 has it on hardware. Perhaps there are few OpenGL 2.1 features that X4500 has and X3100 doesn't(though I doubt it).

 

Archibael an HTPC interested intel employee - though not working in the IGP area - posted that on 08/03/2008 ( click). With the first production version v15.11.0 (15.11.0.1537) driver dated 08/06/2008 this prediction became a fact.

The intel linux driver for the X3100 supports OpenGL 2.1 since 08/10/2008 ( click here for announcement; click here for mesa commit). From observing the 3D graphics driver development for linux I don't see any major differences between the X3100 and X4500 3D hardware besides the increased number of unified shaders.

I consider WDDM 1.1 support already a new feature - that's why I mentioned it.

The most recent "cool" thing that happened to intel windows drivers and applications has been the addition of DXVA accelerated H.264 decoding on G45 chipsets in MediaPlayer Classic - Home Cinema with SVN version 1009 (03/10/2009) ( svn commit; MPC-HC binaries and interesting intel blog entry). We know that the X3100 lacks that piece of H.264 decoding hardware. However it seems intel is pretty commited to continuous driver development right now. Especially since Havendale (Nehalem architecture + IGP) got scrapped and the entire effort postponed from H2/2009 -> H1/2010 ( click) there should be some resources free.

 

Havendale being cancelled just means Arrandale is coming earlier. Would at best only give weeks of free time.

 

Just because the version number of the OpenGL stack is 0.1 higher than in Windows, doesn't make the Linux drivers better. In general the 2D/3D stack on intel hardware is faster in Windows than in Linux.

It is not easy to find benchmarks which back this up, but here are some:
. Java2D Benchmark on GM965 Ubuntu 8.10 vs. Vista SP1 ( click).
. Urban Terror (Quake 3 Engine) on Ubuntu 8.10 vs. MacOS 10.5.5 on i945 Hardware ( click), which demonstrates the performance differences between the Open Source Mesa OpenGL Stack an commercial ones:

. Ubuntu 8.10 vs. 9.04 alpha on some Intel Mobile 4-Series suggests performance regressions and only a few performance enhancements ( click) They are due to the afore mentioned architectural changes. Some regressions are already fixed.

I know this is not an orange to orange comparision. It's just difficult to find benchmarks that do a proper comparision, but is is consistent with my own experience on this hardware and you get the point.

Even though the intel Linux drivers are Open Source, you can't easily port them to Windows as a Windows driver. And even if you invest more time and try to properly port it, you would have to copy a lot of data structures in memory and put in many adapters, which would degrade performance a lot. You would end up with less performance. At least that's the status as of today.

P.S.: The situation with ATI and nVidia is different.

 

Hi guys. I have got HP550 with x3100 and I want to better gaming on it . X3100 is not bad card, but drivers is not good.. What about GMABooster for x3100 or anything like it? Do you have any good tips for better gaming?

 

Well... GMAbooster is for GMA950, unfortunatelly there's not a tool like that for ours 965GM (X3100)...

tips for gaming? be always with the latest drivers, and sometimes test the games with SW T&L... since the HW T&L from the X3100 sometimes it's slower...

this blog have some tips, on how to do this

http://x3100gaming.blogspot.com/2008/12/advanced-settings-part-2.html

 

Yes, the GM965 (X3100) can be configured to different Render speeds (250MHz, 333MHz, 400MHz, 500MHz):


p. 132 http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/316273.pdf

But I don't think there currently exists at all a way to read/detect the current speed. The author of GPU-Z even asked in the intel developer forum and didn't seem to get a reply:

http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/user-community-for-visual-computing/topic/56443/

Benchmarking seems to be the only way. But I expect any GM965 to run at 500MHz. And if you have a subnotebook you might run into serious heat issues if you try to manually override 250MHz -> 500MHz. Still I agree: A tool for reading and potentially setting clocks speeds would be nice to have.

 

hi, I like playing "Urban Terror" (Quake Arena mod) and I have tryed GLDirect 5.02 (now free) to see if the game gains fps forcing using DirectX instead of OpenGL. unfortunately using the "SciTech GLDirect Vertex/Pixel Shader OpenGL Driver" (the speedest I think) every OpenGL game/demo have corrupted graphics. Is a pity because a lot of people on many forums say that the game is much faster with this wrapper. Any other OpenGL wrapper to try? Using instead the "SciTech GLDirect OpenGL Non-Shader Driver" (software mode...) the game is slower than in OpenGl. thank you and sorry for my poor english.

 

I know one of the recent Vista Drivers were supposed to fix Warcraft III bugs. One thing I noticed was that the screen no longer randomly flickered. However, I still have one nagging problem that's hard to reproduce.

Occasionally, my computer would randomly BSOD. I considered it to possibly be a ram problem, but I noticed this only happens when playing warcraft III, not other games. Another thing, it really IS random. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes it happens after 5 minutes of playing a game, sometimes a few hours later.

Reading the more recent posts on this thread has yielded no discussion Does anyone else have this problem?

 

have you tried adding -swtnl to the frozen throne shortcut? i seem to recall people posting about bsod problems while running in hardware mode although i could be wrong.

 

Switching to Software TL as suggested by zan2828 seems to be a good idea.

If the the command line parameter doesn't work, it's worth a try to add Warcraft III to the list of executables for S&L TL in the intel driver:
http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/whitepaper/318888.pdf

This seems to be reasonable since even WoW is included in the list of SWTL:
HKR,, ~WoW.exe, %REG_DWORD%, 1

Besides that I remembered only one time seeing data corruption within driver code of of the X3100 with WoW. However it's WoW and it's MacOS. The walkaround will most likely not work. Posting #161:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3686740801&sid=1&pageNo=9
Given that drivers share lots of code, something similar might show up in Windows as well. The walkaround there disables pixelshaders, which aren't available in the DirectX 8.1 engine of Warcraft III anyway I think. However it gives a hint that switching from something done in hardware to something in software can fix bugs.

Besides that on other notebooks we saw data corruption on the X3100 with all recent intel drivers:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/user-community-for-visual-computing/topic/57863/
Actually only on Dell machines, but testing is quick. In the second posting you find any memory test that runs within Vista:
http://hcidesign.com/memtest
It's important to run the memory test while the Vista gfx driver is running otherwise there is no corruption of memory. If you also suffer from this bug, you should find it within a couple of seconds.

 

Thanks 7oby for the suggestions!
I actually am using software TnL with both the registry tweak as well as the commandline switch -swtnl. I will try the memory corruption test though, it seems like a possible source of error

 

Okay, it seems like we're getting some real fun with our X3100 graphics. Intel released a performance profiler for IGP graphics:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gpa/

 

Whoa... I'm downloading it right now... but wth? 300+MB????

Ah, just to tell, I play a lot an old racing game called street legal racing redline... very cool for gearheads like me... and it runs A LOT better in SW mode.

 

Bah, it doesnt work with X3100?

INTEL.

 

I can not find any support list for it, I want to download this GPA also

 

Sadly, you're right. The release notes mentions

But since it also says:

and those versions are not yet available for the X3100 chipset, it might work in future releases and with more recent graphics drivers.

Actually it still works!

. Launch Server.exe
. Launch SystemAnalyer.exe (or any other analyzer)

And ignore:



Here's a quick Screenshot while analyzing google earth in DX9.0 mode:


Don't know whether GPU utilization will also be visible. Doesn't seem so. Left tree structure is missing "GFX Driver" and "GPU". I guess these are due to too old drivers (v15.12.4 installed) and might be available in future releases. One feature I see already: Overriding of particular GPU rendering settings, which might be useful if app doesn't allow you to.

Anyway: Need to get back to work. No more input from my side today regarding this topic. Try yourself.

 

Let's go try install G45 drivers to x3100.. Is it possible, or not?

7oby : Your guide is not good for me. When i click on OK in system analyzer, it gives error - An unexpected error occurred...

 

Hey i just installed the March drivers and Windows rated me back to 3.4

What gives = (

 

march drivers??? where?

 

I'd like to ask the same question with hitman72. 3.4 seem to be pretty fair for x3100, I only got 3.2 to 3.3

 

I only got 3.1... and I'm at C2D T7300 2.0GHz and Windows 7... :S Weird...

 

Wich drivers are you guys using? I dunno if the latest ones are really good...

 

highlighted your problem.
BETA OS
And also the ratings in win7 have changed.

 

wow this has got to be one of the longest-running threads on NBR

ive been through 5 laptops since this thread hit page 12

i see people still worry about windows performance ratings...some things never change

 

Well, but my performance it's better in Win7 than in any other OS.

Well, if the ratings changed, thats it.

Just for info, the Win7 beta build 7000 for me it's best than all finished windows releases together. Its just too good to be true.

 

I think it is because there's a large number of user who owns the x3100. There's many blogs about the x3100 and youtube channel about x3100 also.

I was surprised when Windows XP and Vista can not run System Shock 2 but Windows 7 run it perfectly

 

Yeah, Windows 7 is awesome for our poor X3100...

I'm using the latest Intel Vista drivers. Are them better than the default win7 ones?

I was wondering about this.

And about the longevity of the topic, well... I agree that a lot, very much people have laptops with the X3100... I think there's still much of them selling on the market. I read about a X3100 that can go up to 441MB of video memory, the newer ones that came on Dell lappies... anyone knows anything about this?

 

Hi i'm an a poor soul xD
i have a big problem with my x3100
I´ll try to play assasin's creed in my vaio cr-460f
3gb ram
2.1 core2duo

my problem is when i had vista(this image is from the cr-260 of my friend, we had the same video card) look there is 128 mb+200 mb from ram memory



now when i did the downgrade to xp, with the intel 965 mobile express chip gma x3100 driver, only show me 128 mb and don't take anything from ram




I LOOKED into the Bios(nothing)
By Biaggio199999999 By Biaggio199999999


este es el reporte de la tarjeta en xp Report Date: 04/03/2009 Report Time[hr:mm:ss]: 11:11:09 Driver Version: 6.14.10.5029 Operating System: Windows XP* Professional, Service Pack 3 (5.1.2600) Default Language: Spanish DirectX* Version: 9.0 Physical Memory: 3062 MB Minimum Graphics Memory: 8 MB Maximum Graphics Memory: 128 MB Graphics Memory in Use: 10 MB Processor: x86 family 6 Model 23 Stepping 6 Processor Speed: 2094 MHZ Vendor ID: 8086 Device ID: 2A02 Device Revision: 0C * Accelerator Information * Accelerator in Use: Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset Family Video BIOS: 1471.0 Current Graphics Mode: 1280 x 800 True Color (60 Hz) * Devices Connected to the Graphics Accelerator * Active Notebook Displays: 1 * Notebook * Monitor Name: Monitor Plug and Play Display Type: Digital Gamma Value: 3,54 DDC2 Protocol: Supported Maximum Image Size: Horizontal: Not Available Vertical: Not Available Monitor Supported Modes: 1280 x 800 (60 Hz) Display Power Management Support: Standby Mode: Not Supported Suspend Mode: Not Supported Active Off Mode: Supported Raw EDID: 00 ff ff ff ff ff ff 00 36 7f 40 00 0e 00 00 00 00 0c 01 03 80 ff ff ff 2f 00 00 a0 57 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 c7 1b 00 a0 50 20 17 30 0c 30 43 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 fd 00 00 3c 00 e5 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4a * Other names and brands are the property of their respective owners.

 

the amount of ram the x3100 uses in openGL can be adjusted in 3d settings, changing 'driver memory footprint'. for other applications I don't know.

the huge bios photo's were unnecessary...

 

@Biaggio,
FIrst of all, the x3100 only have 8mb dedicated, the other it takes from system ram, and it has a feature (I forgot its name) to change the amount of Ram it takes base on your system ram (for example, if ur system has 1024mb ram, it will take 120mb, if ur system has 2048mb ram, it will take 248mb ram...), but in Vista, the smallest amount of ram of x3100 will always be 256mb. In your case, the ram of your x3100 in both should be 358mb.
Why don't u try the game with X3100 first to see if it can run, I'd like to recommend running COD4 or Titan Quest cos it won't run if the x3100 only have 128mb ram.
@diego the driver of Vista is showed to be the older version than the one of Win7 and they perform almost the same in some of the games I tried

 

Probably, I can't read your language.

 

Sorry because I wrote it in a hurry and my ENG still need to be improved also.
What I mean is Baggio should have 358mb ram instead of 128mb as shown in his pics.
And he should try the game first and ask question later, even if it has 1GB ram, the x3100 is still x3100...

 

[IMG=http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9472/dibujohgm.jpg][/IMG]

well THE MEaning of this: space of the memory host in the driver: it have three levels: high, medium and low.
Thanks for your help

[IMG=http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9472/dibujohgm.jpg][/IMG]

 

hi bro, don't worry, xD I'm peruvian, I´ll try to improve my english everyday too, anyway, I had 358 mb in Vista OS, when I did the downgrade to Xp I forgot the support of the ram to the video card, now making a game with the resolution settings, I opened and played Assasin Creed with the lowest performance:graphics,details, but after 5 minutes, appear the blue screen and my system was reboot.
Thanks for your help

 

Just try to read this table:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3100#Table_of_GMA_graphics_cores_and_chipsets

That's a ridiculous request. This game is much too demanding for this graphics chipset. Either try another game or buy a different notebook or live with the gaming slideshow.

XP and Vista have a very different way of allocating graphics memory. In practice this may result in Vista being able to allocate a different amount of main memory to the graphics card than XP can do.

If you want to understand the reasons and backgrounds for the reported numbers, then read section Dynamic Video Memory XP / Vista here:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-gma-3000-and-x3000-developers-guide/
Also read and understand this entire document (the GraphicsMemory.doc file):
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/graphicsmemory.mspx

Performancewise the fps in most games should be very similar in XP and Vista. No matter how much memory either of them have.

Why did you downgrade? Did you notice any gaming performance differences?

 

Hi bro, well I did the downgrade because Windows Vista Sucks, in one word xD
I needed a software S10, and only runs in xp, i'm an enginner, but In my free times i'll tried to played assasin i noticed all this stuff about video
well i see that it's imposible play that game, xD what a shame. i will try another games, thanks for your help to all of you. thanks for your support and taking your time bros